Arnold St Mary

War Memorial

The list of fallen from World War I	Those who fell in World War II
The Allen Solly memorial	The St Katherine Chapel

After the First World War St Katherine’s Chapel was refurbished and rededicated in memory of the 252 men of Arnold who had lost their lives. Wooden panelling, a table taken from the vestry, and an altar rail were installed. In 1976 the Mothers’ Union bought the altar frontal.

The altar is a Jacobean oak table which was for many years the altar in Gonalston Parish Church; apparently in 1852 it was relegated to a hayloft in Gonalston and lay unused until 1910, when it was given to Arnold as a vestry table. A memorial with the names of the fallen men is on the wall, and the Act of Remembrance is conducted here each year on Remembrance Sunday. In 1955 another list of the 89 Arnold men who gave their lives in the Second World War was compiled by Pat Winnett. Their details are recorded in a bound register and a memorial plaque erected on the wall beneath the First World War plaque.

On the back wall of the north aisle is another marble plaque to the First World War, men who died and who previously had worked at Allen and Solley’s Factory on Coppice Road. When the factory was demolished the plaque was transferred to the church.

On one of the pillars on the left hand side of the nave is a cased crucifix. A note attached to it explains that Bill Taylor, an Arnold man serving in the Sherwood Foresters regiment, found the crucifix amongst the rubble, following the Battle of Mons in 1914. He carried it in his knapsack for the rest of the war, including the battles fought at Ypres and Hill 60. After the war, Bill returned to Arnold, worshipped in Saint Mary’s, and was the Church Treasurer for many years. He died in 195, and his brother George gave it to Saint Mary’s in 1995.